March 30, 2012

Yes. I have a Kindle, and I use it regularly. It's lighter than a 500-page hardcover, and if I need a book quickly, well, it's faster than overnight shipping.

There are lots of reasons people dislike eBooks. There is something about holding a bound book, something about the beauty of it on a shelf, something about what our bookshelves tell visitors about us when they enter our homes. (Entering my apartment, you can see bookshelves in my bedroom. On more than one occasion, guests have asked if they can go into my bedroom and check out my books.) I am one of those people who loves books, and will always cherish them (much the same way I cherish the 1,000 vinyl LPs in my office).

My tears are for history, and eBooks — and more broadly other digital communications — don't bode well for it.

Shakespeare's First Folio (Written in WordStar 2.26.)

I have a cousin who is an archivist at Brandeis University, where she has in her care (and at her access) a copy of Shakespeare's first folio (which someday I hope to visit). So, ponder this: If Will had his manuscripts on a floppy disc, what would their state be now? Would the data be recoverable? Would we even know what to do with a 400-year-old computer file? I doubt it. Forget Shakespeare, though, how about the Iliad and the Odyssey? Or going back further, the great holy texts or sliding back another notch, cave paintings. We've gone from stone to parchment to paper to bits and bytes, each step a little less durable.

eBooks reflect a certain cultural arrogance. It's the notion that our society is never-ending. If history shows us anything, societies die, are lost, and only rediscovered by digging deep into the ground. But we, like our predecessors, believe we'll last forever.

Even more recent treasures fall victim, say an obscure French book from the 1920s that's been found in a barn — an only copy, long forgotten and out of print. If you can read, in this case French, it's as easy to handle as a paperback picked up in the airport.

So, what's going to happen to the greatest thoughts of our time? The most momentous writings? The unpublished journals and collections of letters that give us insight into the past. We live in a disposable society, and now even our thoughts are disposable.

What will future civilizations learn about us? Most certainly, they won't be reading this blog (unless you print it out and store it very safely). Are we deleting ourselves from history?

Anyone who's followed this blog through its extremely rare postings knows I don't fight technology. Every advance is a tradeoff, something gained and something lost. I just try to make sense of the changes. The only consistent truth is that there's no rolling them back.

I do love my Kindle on the subway, and it's great to have the complete works of Poe, which were free. But as the train runs beneath the city, I do shed a small tear as it rides into obscurity.

August 01, 2011

This was announced on July 12, more than two weeks ago. So, why am I writing about this now? Because Netflix is a great example of how to use social media to damage your own brand.

Let me start with the email sent out on July 12: Netflix announced that it would be “separating [its] unlimited streaming plan from [its] DVD plan offerings." In other words, it wasn’t a price increase; you just had to ... ummm ... pay more money for the same service.

Wouldn’t you know it, people were pissed. And its not Netflix’s first price hike of the year.

Let me use my subscription as an illustration. I have the Three DVD and Unlimited Streaming plan. Back in January (yes, 2011), my rates went from $16.99 to $19.99. OK. Three dollars. Prices go up.

Then, a few months later, the email comes:

Your current $19.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $23.98 a month ($7.99 + $15.99).

$16.99 to $23.98 in less seven months, that’s a 41% — lets call it what it is — price increase.

In addition to announcing this by email, it did the same on its Facebook page, with no effort to explain the reasoning behind the change. People were pissed. Go figure.

On July 12, angry posts were coming in faster than I could count, and over on Twitter, “Dear Netflix" was trending (and those weren’t love tweets). As I write, the Facebook post has received 81,187 angry responses to the announcement.